Wisconsin ranked 37th in private sector job creation last year, lagging behind the national average, based on the latest numbers released Thursday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Gov. Scott Walker has said voters should rely on the numbers, gathered from a survey of nearly every Wisconsin business, to measure how well he is doing on his signature 2010 campaign promise to add 250,000 private sector jobs in the state by the end of this year.

In 2013, the state added 28,141 private sector jobs for a growth rate of 1.2 percent. The national average was 2.1 percent.

Through the first three years of Walker’s term, the state added slightly fewer than 92,000 private sector jobs. Taken together with monthly job numbers, which are less reliable than the quarterly figures released by BLS, there have been 101,213 private sector jobs created in Walker’s term through April. Walker’s administration was expected to release new numbers for May later Thursday.

The governor points to those job creation numbers, which come after the state lost 133,000 jobs in the second term of Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle, as a sign that his policies are a success. The state’s unemployment rate, 5.8 percent as of April, is also the lowest it’s been since 2008, before the Great Recession.

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